The Bilbao Effect - the idea that one building can transform the fortunes of an entire region - was today described as “bullshit” by the architect who pioneered it.

Frank Gehry built the spectacular fish-scaled Guggenheim museum in Bilbao for less than $100 million 11 years ago.

It paid for itself within a year and spearheaded an economic, social and cultural revival of the Basque region, which is now one of the most popular destinations in Spain after years blighted by terrorist violence.

Ever since, ambitious city planners from Gateshead to Guanzhou have fallen over themselves to bag an iconic new building by a superstar architect in the hope that it will provide a similar upturn.

But this morning, speaking in front of the temporary summer pavilion he has designed for the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, Gehry, 79, said that the so-called “Bilbao Effect” had been misunderstood.

“It’s a bunch of bullshit,” he said. “You do a building, you solve the problems, people are happy and that’s nice.”

However, a really successful building, like the Guggenheim, cannot simply be churned out to order. “It is kind of a miracle, you don’t quite know how it happens”.

“In the case of Bilbao, they asked for Sydney Opera House when we started but they had a comprehensive plan for the community. Foster did the subway system, Jim Stirling was doing a train station that never happened, Calatrava did the airport and everybody did a vineyard.

“So there was sort of an intent to change the community and it worked.”

Hyping the power of one building to revive an area is also a distraction from the real business of putting up good buildings, Gehry said. “I don’t think you start out to make a marquee development. They talk about “spectacle architecture” and I think people jump on these kind of things but from my point of view I don’t start out to do that.

“We have budgets, we have clients and time constraints. It is wonderful that every once in a while we can do something that people like.

“I do think architecture is a profession that deserves to have its masterpieces and occasionally somebody manages to eke one out. Not everybody can do it and, God knows, I didn’t know I could.”

Gehry is arguably the most sought after of a small coterie of jet-setting “starchitects” which also includes, among others Lords Foster and Rogers, Zaha Hadid and Herzog & De Meuron, the Swiss renovators of Tate Modern.

His stainless steel coated Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles was recently adopted as the city’s new symbol by its Chamber of Commerce, replacing the hillside Hollywood sign. Current work includes projects in Las Vegas, Manhattan, California, Pananama and Spain and he has achieved that modern cultural apotheosis: an appearance in The Simpsons.

However the Serpentine Pavilion is his first building in England (he has built a Maggie’s Centre for cancer patient care in Dundee).

It is the eighth such temporary pavilion to be built on the gallery’s lawn - a unique initiative that has brought some of the finest international architects to work in the country for the first time.

The timber glass and steel Pavilion was inspired by butterfly wings, beach huts and Leonardo Da Vinci’s designs for catapults. To the untrained eye it looks like a collapsing tower of Jenga bricks.

Opening on Saturday July 19 it will function as a cafe during the day and host live events, music, performance and debates at night.

Jack Pringle, former President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said that Gehry’s Guggenheim had played a crucial role in rebranding Bilbao but agreed that it would not have had the same effect without other less heralded improvements: “Bilbao was a spectacular example of how to regenerate a city. The lesson to learn is that they had a strategy which included both infrastructure and iconic landmarks. It’s the combination of the two that works - a cocktail that can make the most amazing difference if you get it right.

“We have had some notable successes here, such as Glasgow, Manchester and Cardiff but also some failures such as West Bromwich, where they had a great building by Will Alsop but the wrong strategy, and the Millennium Dome”

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